Hong Kong Palace Museum holds first fully digital show on Forbidden City
Show includes moving images of icons such as dragons and phoenixes – all rendered at immense scale for visitors to enjoy
The Hong Kong Palace Museum has launched its first entirely digital show, creating reimagined versions of its Beijing sister site’s exhibits, as well as a beloved stray cat cared for by the latter’s staff, in interactive displays packed with visual effects.
The show includes projections of moving images of the Forbidden City icons such as dragons, phoenixes, lotus flowers, peaches, egrets and ocean waves – all rendered at immense scale for visitors to enjoy.
The event, titled “The Ways in Patterns: An Immersive Digital Exhibition from the Palace Museum”, is being held in the West Kowloon Cultural District and uses technology to refashion a wide array of motifs and designs used in the former royal residence’s architecture, ceramics and embroidered textiles.
“This is our first entirely digital show,” Maggie Cheng, the Hong Kong Palace Museum’s head designer, said.
Technology took the centre stage for this exhibition, contrasting with past displays that focused on highlighting historical artefacts, she added.
She noted that the museum’s sister site in Beijing had a collection comprising 1.86 million pieces, with only 1 per cent of them ever going on display at any one time for an exhibition.